Starting in David's group

• This page is more for post-docs and grad students, but maybe also for staff
• An older, non-wiki version of the new staff page is at [1], the current page is at [2]
• You might want to print this page

If you don't read anything here, read at least this

• Until the next crash of the IT economy (expected for 2018 or 2019), given our salaries, housing is the single most annoying problem while working for UCSC
• Get your name now onto a waiting list! It takes five minutes and does not require a UCSC email address or appointment letter, they're very flexible. You'll arrive here and just have to pick up a key. They even provide furniture, if you need it.
• Read #Housing now
• Arriving at the right time makes all the difference. Avoid August/September, thousands of students are in town and snatch any apartment for insane prices. June-Sep is the busy time for single family homes, with most offers.
• But it's easiest to find a temporary places during the time June-Sept, as the students are away. You may want to start in June, if you can.
• You cannot rent a place from abroad here. Book an Airbnb for the first weeks and work up from there.
• Bring rental references, even from abroad and a letter from your UCSC boss, it's a landlord market here and you will have to apply to a few places to get one.

If you are an alien: Before you leave

• Visa at home: J-1 visas have high priority, you get them often one day after the embassy appointment. But don't underestimate the time it takes to get an appointment and all the paperwork. You need to pay a fee for the SEVIS website (=the database of foreign students/scholars), a fee for the embassy and a fee for the appointment scheduling system (=built by a federal subcontractor). Keep the SEVIS receipt PDF in a safe place, you'll need it every year afterwards during your postdoc. The appointment itself takes only a few minutes, plus some waiting time. The embassies are actually very well organized, so while they make a big fuss of every little detail in the application forms, in Munich and Paris at least you can show up without a picture (there is a machine), without the stamps (there is another machine for that), with a mobile phone (they do keep it) and even without the application printout (they have PCs and printers). In Paris it's a bit different, you absolutely need the visa fee receipt, as you cannot get into the building otherwise.
• H1b visas are even quicker than J1s. Once you have the appointment, it takes only a few days.
• Spouses: J1s come with a spouse working permit, but that can take 6 month to get, so apply very early for the J2 work permit. UCSC gives out J1s only for a year, which is horrible, it means your spouse can almost not get a job. Lobby the University to give you a longer contract, try to go through your PI, do anything you can, there is no rational reason for this limit. A longer contract does not mean that they cannot lay you off and it does not mean that they cannot revoke the visa. UCSD and Berkeley give out longer contracts, no problem, just UCSC is strange in that respect. Ask the visa office for the exception, it may have changed by now.
• Don't bring too much stuff. Everything is cheap here on craigslist. Americans love to throw things away. Bikes, etc are easy to find especially at the end of the University term. Moving companies are very expensive and it will take them 2-3 months to get your stuff across any ocean, even if they say otherwise (once they have your boxes, they don't care anymore). Once your stuff has arrived, you'll have it already replaced (if it's important), most of the fragile things will be broken,

Housing

• Grad students qualify for "Family and Student housing". Get your name onto the waitling list, now! [3]
• Postdocs qualify for sometimes for Family and Student housing and some parts of Employee housing.
  • Contact [4] and ask if they can add you to the family housing list. Do it now!
  • Employee housing is a totally different system. Contact them and ask for your options, most likely it will be Laureate Court. [5]. Do it now! The waiting time is 3-9 months. No official appointment letter is needed AFAIK, just a contact on campus who can confirm that you'll be hired.
  • "UCSC community rentals" is a craiglist-like site with very few options. Don't count on finding something but it may be worth the five minutes to check.
  • Employeehousing also has houses on sale. This sounds crazy for a 2 year contract, but get your name also added to this list! [6] The reason is that these are not real sales, there is only one seller (UCSC) and one buyer (UCSC), there always is demand (there even was in 2008) and you have an almost guaranteed salesprice, because it goes up x% per year. You are not allowed to modify your house so it's basically like renting, except that you can get your money back. You should add your name to this list as soon as you can (once you're really here). You can do it online.
• For temporary housing, try the Craigslist or this facebook group [7]

For aliens in Santa Cruz

• • For general advice on how to start in the US and in Santa Cruz in particular, see Jill Bejerano's old page, tons of interesting stuff, unfortunately, not all of this is valid anymore (e.g. credit history is becoming less important, after the crash, not having credit might be an advantage actually)
  • Count on running around for 2-3 weeks to get all the paperwork done
  • There is no I94 stamp in a passport anymore. Get it from here https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/I94/
  • validate your J1 Visa: No rush, you have at least 10 days. You need ISSS to get your SEVIS entry OKed before you can apply for a social security number. After this, you have to wait until a time that is at least 10 days after your entry into the US, and 48 hours after ISSS has made the entry. You need to bring your DS2019 to ISSS and your passport with the I94 inside. At the social security office, you can shorten the wait by filling out a "new SSN" forms next to the entrance, on the wall. If you show up at 9:15, then the waiting time is usually not longer than 10 minutes. Show up at 11:00 and you might wait for an hour.
  • You can get the SSN two days later by going to US Soc Sec Adm again
  • You can have the social security card sent to the lab, just make sure that you have the right address, with the "Mailstop: CBSE-ITI" mentioned on it.
  • Next step: Open a bank account
    • For foreigners: Rather avoid credit unions and local banks: They are difficult to wire money to as often they don't have SWIFT BICs
    • Bank of the West insisted on a proof of address, Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, etc seem to be easier
    • My recommendation: Go to BoA, Wells Fargo or Chase, so you can transfer money from abroad
    • Don't believe what the banks tell you: You can open an account without a social security number. Sometimes they will restrict the account (no debit, no checks). In this case, you can go to a different bank
    • Wells Fargo didn't have any restriction on non-SSN accounts
    • to send money from/to overseas USForex.com has amazing service and branches in Europe, Australia, Canada and the US, with real people on the phone who route the transfer through their network. It takes around one week and is a lot easier to setup than via your bank, though not a lot cheaper.
  • Send the SSN to HR (Jolinda) and the bank account details to leeann@ucsc.edu
  • As an alien (not Canada), you don't need to pay tax for two years: http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/cao/paycoord/taxstate.html
  • Depending on the Tax Treaty, you might have to reimburse taxes if you stay more than 2 years and 1 day (England) (not France, Germany, Spain)
  • Be very careful with the health insurance. You have 30 days to sign up for the insurance, it's close to impossible afterwards. The only time you can make changes is in late November, every year. If you're not used to the US, ask your colleagues. Don't go to the hospital unless you must and you know you have insurance. Calling ambulances is usually not a good idea, unless you're having a heart attack. Read up on Wikipedia about the difference between HMOs (like England/Italy/Spain) and PPOs (more like in Switzerland/Germany/Netherlands).
  • Technically, you don't need a California drivers license anymore if you have one from home. So, no rush. However, it is still very useful. I would get one. Get an appointment at the DMV. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/. Do not go without an appointment, it's like in a third world country there. Once you get to talk to someone, they're actually nice. Practice the drivers license questions using samples on the internet. Spending 1-2 hours on it should be enough, the drivers licenses here are a joke compared to most other rich countries. Make sure you bring a printout of your I94, they will not do it for you. Go to this website, https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/I94/ download your I-94 and bring it with you, otherwise they cannot give you a driver's license. Make sure to practice the hand signs for the driving practice test. Once you're through it, you will get a temporary permit and a few weeks later the real license.
  • If you don't want to renew your license every year, you can get your driver's license under AB-60, as an illegal, undocumented immigrant. To become an undocumented immigrant officially, you need to submit lots of documents. Bring lots of papers that prove who you are (bank account, rental agreement, 3 paystubs, etc) and you will get a five-year driver's license, which is pretty convenient. It has a little mark though that it is not a federal piece of ID, but apparently it's accepted at airports by TSA. (Either way, never fly without your passport, even domestically.) It's too new to tell if there are any real inconveniences of this route.

Santa Cruz

• Map with places we like, eating places, supermarkets, bars, etc [8] , created by Thomas Juettemann and Max

Administrative

• Postdoc office phone numer: +1 831 459 5232
• Address
  • Mail Stop: CBSE
  • Mailing Address: 501 Engineering 2 Building, Mailstop CBSE/ITI, UC Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
  • FAX Number: 831-459-1809
• You will have an appointment at Human Resources on the ground floor of the Engineering 2 building (=our building) where you will have to fill out and sign tons of forms. They also give you a campus map
• Healthcare:
  • Medical: Do some research on the difference between PPO and HMO on Wikipedia. PPO means that you pay per service, but you can select and change doctors at your will, you can see specialists. With HMO you have to go to an assigned family doctor who might not be what you want and you cannot see specialists without his approval. The details are buried in PDF files here and you can also look up the available doctors in the Santa Cruz area for each plan.
  • Number one rule of health care in the US: don't pay the bills!! I have double-checked my last four bills and three of them contained errors that meant I had to pay too much. They systematically overcharge you. The difference for me was 1200$ in just three bills. Always assume that any bill you receive from a hospital is wrong and too high. The bill itself does not allow you to check it, because they do not include the essential information (lab test or not, preventive or not, date of service, in or out of network provider) on the bill. Only the insurance knows the details. The bill also uses unreadable CPT codes which you have to google. There is zero legislation on how health care bills have to be written, and as a result, there is no way for you to figure out if the amount is correct. The only way to find out is to pick up the phone and call the health insurance and/or the hospital, which is difficult for foreigners at first, but you will have to learn it, if you want to save. One step is to not pay these bills for at least a few months, so someone in the hospital has to look at them at least quickly.
  • Some explanations of PPO versus HMO http://www.pamf.org/forpatients/billing/healthplans_coverage.html
  • Do *not* take the Dental HMO plan! The PPO plan costs you the same and you will be able to choose your dentist! The HMO dentists are at Watsonville, San Jose and Los Gatos, impossible to reach without a car, and you cannot choose one yourself, if you don't like your assigned dentist.
• Use the map to get to the University ID office, they will print your ID card (it is located at the intersection of Steinhart / Hager roads) see also campus map http://interactivemap.ucsc.edu/
• Go to see Al McGuire in the Baskin Engineering building (the old building just in front) in room 399 amcguire@soe.ucsc.edu, open from 1pm to 3pm, to get your card activated. Take the bridge, go upstairs one floor, it's in the big floor that crosses the whole building, on the right hand side when looking from Engineering 2
• If you plant to cycle to work, ask him for a key to the showers (Eng, ground floor, next to bathrooms)
• Once HR has entered your SSN into their system, one day later, you will be able to use the ucop website "atyourservice [9]
  • You CAN apply for a direct salary transfer here, even though HR won't believe it, do this immediately, otherwise you will get a check with your salary.
    • You can cash them in for free at Wells-Fargo, they will very very aggressively try to sign you up for a bank account. Don't believe them that you need to sign up for them to cash in the check, they supposedly have an agreement with the University to do it for free (and try to get new bank customers via that route). On the other hand, Wells Fargo is one of the better-organized banks and has decent service.
    • Bank accounts: Be aware that transfers from abroad onto Union (Bay Area or Community Credit Unions) are quite difficult as they don't have Swift/BIC codes.
  • You need to enter your SSN without hyphens and your birthdate as mmddyy when you create your login
  • Sign up immediately for the health plan, you have only 30 days to do this and you can do it via ucop
  • Make sure that your address in ucop is correct: The health company will send you insurance card to it
• You should have an SOE account / SOE email address, this should have been done automatically via the CBSE admin office
• You will receive cruzID registration emails
  • define your passwords
  • redirect your cruzId emails to your SOE account
• Order office supplies from gopalace.com, copy shopping cart into email and send to Danielle
• Note the intranet webpage of CBSE, it allows you to books rooms and download reimbursement forms.

Travel

• Get travel insurance for free from http://www.ucop.edu/riskmgt/uctrips/
• Get travel reimbursement forms from https://cbse.soe.ucsc.edu/travel
• If done early enough, there is usually no need to pay out of pocket for the University. Just ask fill out the travel advance request form.
• The UCSC pretrip guide is actually not that bad: https://financial.ucsc.edu/Pages/Travel_PreTripGuide.aspx#before
• you have only 45 days after your trip to get all paperwork to the UCSC office. Keep in mind that handing it in to CBSE is not enough, it has to be at the University's office. There are no exceptions, if you miss the deadline, you'll have to pay for the conference yourself. Double-check with the CBSE office and get a confirmation that the forms were forwarded, especially for bigger expenses.
  • UCSC will not pay for flexible ticket surcharges, e.g. when they allow you to rebook at a cheaper rate for a small fee
  • You can get driven to the airport by a friend and give them the reimbursement (around 75$ for SFO), as this is usually cheaper for the University than paying for your parking or paying your shuttle
• federal grants have a requirement to use US airlines (Fly America Act), but this is almost a non-issue anymore when you fly to Japan or to Europe, as all Japanese and European carriers are accepted under the "open skies" agreement. Also, if any leg of the flight is code-shared with a US airline, this is also fine.
• the recommended way to book travel is through UC Connexxus. It's more expensive than the cheapest flight/hotel/car on Kayak, but the paperwork will be a looot easier and the booking includes some niceties, like automatic travel insurance signup, maximum rental car coverage and a few upgrades here and there.
  • Especially useful for rental cars
  • Booking though Connexus may include the "seat charges" some airlines now make you pay to get an aisle or window seat

Meetings and groups

• Subscribe to any of these mailing lists (genecats and staff is recommended, other depending on your preferences)
  • genecats: https://lists.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/genecats
  • Staff: https://lists.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/staff
  • Genome reconstruction aka "David group meeting": http://lists.bx.psu.edu/options/rec
  • Haussler Wetlab aka "Salama group meeting" https://lists.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/hausslerwetlab
  • Cancer group: https://lists.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cancercats
  • CompBio (PSB compbio news+Kevin's son's theatre performances) https://lists.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/compbio
• Other email lists here are aliases on the SOE mail system, /var/mail/aliases on the moondance machine, email bob kuhn to subscribe
  • browser-qa
  • browser-staff aka "Kent group meeting"
  • cluster-staff
  • encode
  • genome-www
  • push-request
  • these two are managed by the CBSE admin office and you should be subscribed automatically:
  • hausslergrads
  • hausslerwetlab
• If you work on the browser sourccode, sign up for a redmine account, email Ann Zweig for details. Redmine is the bug tracker used here for internal browser communication
• If you want to modify the browser source code, you need to pass the "git test", be added to the git group and need a pushqueue account, search for git on this wiki and learn how to modify a source file, then talk to Galt to pass your text
• There are the following meetings during the week and their MCs:
  • Monday: Browser Staff Group 11 am (Ann Zweig)
  • Tuesday: Immuno Journal Club 11 am (Ngan and Hyunsung)
  • Wednesday: Wetlab 12:30 (Salama), very very rarely: Genecats 2 pm (Donna), Cancer Group 3:30 pm (Jing)
  • ~Wed/Thursday: CGL Group (Benedict), changing schedule
  • Friday: Nothing?

Technical

• Closest scanner: Front office, second door on the right, just enter your email and press scan
• Out-of-hours Scanner: Get copy card in postdoc room (Daniel's cube?), 2nd floor, media room, enter card, press "scan", enter email address of recipient, press copy button
• Printer: Add the "oops" printer (yes this is the DNS name), select the IPP protocol if asked
  • Color printer is in the front office, HP Color LaserJet CP4520 Series, hostname "lollipop"
  • Other printers: http://support.soe.ucsc.edu/printing
• Fax: Ask at front desk or see scanner
• Reserve a room: https://cbse.soe.ucsc.edu/conf/reserve/form

• Clusters
  • see Where_is_everything

• Account config
  • use /cluster/install/utilities/chsh to change your shell to bash
  • copy ~hiram/.bashrc.hiram to your homedir and add the line "source .bashrc.hiram" to your own .bashrc file
  • Never put anything into your homedir when working on the cluster, create a new data store dir on /hive/users/<youname>
  • If you have any problems with your account, email cluster-admin@soe.ucsc.edu
  • Read Cluster Jobs and "Where is everything" and "Parasol Manual"
  • make sure that you are a member of the "genecats" and "protein" groups
  • You might want to add this statement as well to your bashrc, will add tab completion to the para command:

 complete -o default -W "create push try shove make check stop chill finished hung slow crashed failed status problems running hippos time recover priority maxJob resetCounts freeBatch showSickNodes clearSickNodes" para

• Cancer stuff:
  • Install http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/downloads.html if you're on Windows or Mac
  • Get the .key and .cert files from Erich and place them into the openvpn/config directory.
  • place the .ovpn file into the same directory, adapt the paths
  • open the ovpn file with openvpn

Genome Browser

• • Email cluster-admin and ask them to setup your own browser
  • check out the kent source tree via git into /hive/users/<yourname>/kent and run make in lib, hg/lib and then "make cgi"
  • create a hg.conf in /usr/local/apache/cgi-bin-<yourname>/ copy an existing one from e.g. /usr/local/apache/cgi-bin-pauline
  • modify the line with db.trackDb to read db.trackDb=trackDb,trackDb_<yourname>
  • modify your ~/.hg.conf: add username and password (ask someone else, anyone who has set up their own browser, to give you the write-access password for hgwdev's mysql), modify the line db.trackDb to point to trackDb_<yourname>, like this: db.trackDb=trackDb_<yourname>
  • create a new trackDb directory structure in your homedir, something like ~haeussle/usr/trackDb
  • add a new track to hg19 trackdb, run "make human" to show the track and check on <yourname>.soe.ucsc.edu http://hgwdev-<yourname>.soe.ucsc.edu that everything works.

Restaurants

Our favorites:

• Mongolian: Oyunaa's (Seabright), excellent food
• Breakfast: Silver Spoon (Soquel). Walnut Cafe (downtown), Linda's on Seabright.
• Japanese: Kaito (41st), really good Sushi and Ramen. Alternative: Kauboi in Aptos.
• Italian: Tramonti (Seabright), by far the best Pizza. Pasta OK.
• Chinese: Nothing really. Maybe the one next to Kaito.
• Indian: Nothing really. Sitar (Pacific) is OK and cheap.
• Thai: Lots. Not sure. Pacific Thai?
• Downtown: Malabar (veg), India Joe's (pseudo-asian), ...
• Bar: Poet and Patriot? Unsure.
• Mexican: Los Pinos ("upscale") (Pacific) or Los Perriquos (cheaper)
• German: Tyrolian Inn (Ben Lomond) (pretty bad, if you're from Europe, but an experience)